Joe closely watched the place where his assailant had disappeared, and presently saw a dark hand, then a naked elbow, and finally the ramrod of a rifle.  The savage was reloading.  Soon a rifle-barrel protruded from behind the tree.  With his heart beating like a trip-hammer, and the skin tightening on his face, Joe screened his body as best he might.  The tree was small, but it served as a partial protection.  Rapidly he revolved in his mind plans to outwit the enemy.  The Indian was behind a large oak with a low limb over which he could fire without exposing his own person to danger.

“Bang!” The Indian’s rifle bellowed; the bullet crumbled the bark close to Joe’s face.  The lad yelled loudly, staggered to his knees, and then fell into the path, where he lay quiet.

The redskin gave an exultant shout.  Seeing that the fallen figure remained quite motionless he stepped forward, drawing his knife as he came.  He was a young brave, quick and eager in his movements, and came nimbly up the path to gain his coveted trophy, the paleface’s scalp.

Suddenly Joe sat up, raised his rifle quickly as thought, and fired point-blank at the Indian.

But he missed.

The redskin stopped aghast when he saw the lad thus seemingly come back to life.  Then, realizing that Joe’s aim had been futile, he bounded forward, brandishing his knife, and uttering infuriated yells.

Joe rose to his feet with rifle swung high above his head.

When the savage was within twenty feet, so near that his dark face, swollen with fierce passion, could be plainly discerned, a peculiar whistling noise sounded over Joe’s shoulder.  It was accompanied, rather than followed, by a clear, ringing rifleshot.

The Indian stopped as if he had encountered a heavy shock from a tree or stone barring his way.  Clutching at his breast, he uttered a weird cry, and sank slowly on the grass.

Joe ran forward to bend over the prostrate figure.  The Indian, a slender, handsome young brave, had been shot through the breast.  He held his hand tightly over the wound, while bright red blood trickled between his fingers, flowed down his side, and stained the grass.

The brave looked steadily up at Joe.  Shot as he was, dying as he knew himself to be, there was no yielding in the dark eye—­only an unquenchable hatred.  Then the eyes glazed; the fingers ceased twitching.

Joe was bending over a dead Indian.

It flashed into his mind, of course, that Wetzel had come up in time to save his life, but he did not dwell on the thought; he shrank from this violent death of a human being.  But it was from the aspect of the dead, not from remorse for the deed.  His heart beat fast, his fingers trembled, yet he felt only a strange coldness in all his being.  The savage had tried to kill him, perhaps, even now, had it not been for the hunter’s unerring aim, would have been gloating over a bloody scalp.